


Beyond the Sea

by Sonora



Series: Beyond the Sea [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fluff, Gap Filler, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:22:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: After the events of Endgame, Steve makes a life-changing decision.





	Beyond the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Literally just got out of the movie and did not get this scene, omg I needed this moment in the movie. But seriously, it's like midnight here and I'm exhausted and this probably isn't coherent. Need it out of my system.
> 
> (Also spoilers)

Steve had left this one for last.

New York.  2012.  Easy kill, especially in the aftermath of the Chitauri attack.  New York.  Not as glorious as Asgard, not as unbelievable as Morag, but far less horrific than the tidal deserts ofVormir.

(Seeing the Red Skull again.  Guarding the mountain where Nat died.  And the Hydra fuck had had the temerity to apologize.  Wasn’t that the cherry on top of that little sundae of insanity?)

Good old pre-Thanos New York City.

But 2012 New York wasn’t his New York.  Never had been.  Not really.  

All this time travel, planet hopping, reality skipping.  Steve could feel it in his bones, in Captain America’s bones.  Years?  Decades?  He didn’t know anymore.  Sixteen hours ago, he was walking a golden hall of indescribable beauty, art that made the soul stir, but that world was gone. In 2019, it was nothing but free hydrogen floating in the vastness of space.  Here in 2012, it was all still whole.

Steve didn’t know.

He’d been a sickly little boy with dreams.  Then an artist, hustling a living from the frenetic streets of Queens.  Then a soldier. Being a superhero had never been part of the plan

Quite frankly, he was tired of what his life had become.  And not just the intergalactic war stuff - exhausting and exasperating as it was, dealing with it was necessary.  The human side of the equation.  All the betrayal, the animosity, the heartbreak, the loss.

Watching Peggy die in a hospital, her brilliant mind rotting, her beautiful eyes clouded with age.

He’d had such dreams, that sickly little kid from Queens.

The only dream Steve had left now, well.

He'd left New York City to the last.

“It is confusing, isn’t it?”

Steve closed the great wooden door behind him, shutting out the noise and smoke of the street. The foyer of the building enveloped him in an ancient embrace. It felt older than the city, older than the land it was built on. 

It felt, in some not insignificant way, like Vormir.

"What's that?" he replied. There was a woman, bald, in gold robes, standing on a grand staircase like she'd been expecting him. Like she'd been waiting.

"Time," she said, and held out her hand. "It seems linear, the flow of it, the way it carries us along."

"I'm not so sure about that anymore, ma'am," Steve told her honestly. He unsnapped the locks on the briefcase. She had to be the one D. Strange had told him about. But before he could give her back the stone himself, it floated up and out of the case. Like it had a mind of its own.

"And how's that, Captain Rogers?"

"You know, I only have that rank because Sergeant America didn't have quite the right ring for the boys in Public Affairs."

She laughed. A necklace drew open, and the stone tucked itself away again. "We are who we are. We cannot be anything else."

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek, trying to think of how to ask the question. It had been burning in the back of his mind, ever since Tony's funeral. Sitting there in that living room, watching Pepper hold onto their little girl, too young to really know what had happened to her daddy, had brought some things into focus for Steve.

Everyone in the team had given more than should have been asked.

He, on the other hand, had given up possibilities. 

The only possibility that had ever really mattered.

"I've, umm, I've been wondering..."

"We are who we are," Dr. Strange's old mentor told him. "We do what it is in our nature to do."

"This whole time travel thing. Stark and Banner insist there's no such thing as a paradox..."

"And there isn't, because time is not a straight line. The last few weeks should have shown you that," she told him, the weight of centuries in her words. "But Captain Rogers, know this. If you are looking for advice on your next course of action, I have none to give. Only that whatever you intend to do, whatever action you take, is what you will do. I cannot change that. The universe cannot change that."

"I don't understand," he admitted.

She smiled at him. "If you come back here, we can provide you with a fresh set of clothes."

He smiled back and opened the door again. "I'll take that into consideration."

There were enough Pym particles left for his plan, he thought, as he was walking away.

He had saved the world.

Natalie was gone. Tony was gone.

There was nothing more he do for his friends, those who were left.

He had given everything.

There were enough...hed done enough...

For everybody but her.

Steve activated the suit and hit the chronoslip device before he hit the next block.

+++++

Peggy dropped her armload of groceries on the small kitchen table, one foot holding open the door while she reached out more than was probably wise. And of course, there were casualties from the ill-advised move.

She cursed a little to herself as a pair of oranges escaped the brown paper bag to bounce across the tiled floor. 

Trying to manage a full military workload, trying to build up SHIELD, while keeping up with all the cooking and cleaning and other mundane minuiate, all on her own, was... hard. Didn't matter how small her house was, it was just her there and that was the whole problem.

Being alone was hard.

Almost a year since Steve have disappeared, going down with that plane in the ice fields. A year, since he'd left her. No dance - she'd never gotten that promised dance. 

The war had ended. America's brave boys had come home. Everyone had moved on.

Steve hadn't gotten that chance.

They had never gotten their chance.

Tossing her purse up on the table next to the bag, Peggy went after those stupid oranges. The store didn't always have them, and it was always such a treat to find some in such good condition, and if the darn things were ruined by their little trip across the floor...

"Looking for this?"

That voice...

The breath caught in her throat as Peggy pulled her attention up from the floor. Up towards the man standing in her doorway. It seemed like he was framed in light, which was probably some exceedingly silly flight of fancy or a product of the tears that suddenly crowded her eyes.

 

"Steve?" she whispered. The word barely came out.

The man in the doorway nodded, and stepped in a half pace. Held out one of the oranges to her. "I think you dropped this."

She stared at him for a moment. Not in his Captain America costume or uniform brown today. No. He was in a rather well-fitted suit, hair styled in a way that didn't seem quite right from when last she saw him. A bit of gray was creeping through the locks over his ear. His eyes...

She reached out for the orange, and realized her hand was shaking. "Thank you. The grocer filled my bags up a little too high today. I should have asked for a third, I think."

"Sounds reasonable," he agreed, and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

The moment hung between them, neither one of them making any further moves. It occured to her that she had never told him, not in all their time together, how she really felt.

"Won't... won't you come in?" she asked, and this time, her voice was a little stronger. "I was going to make some tea."

"That'd be great."

Peggy felt like she was moving through mud, movements pained and automatic. Fetch the kettle, turn on the faucet, put the kettle in the sink to fill up...

And that was when she felt his hands.

She had to choke back a sob as he leaned into her, chest to her back, hands at her waist and chin dipping to press against her shoulder. The boldness of it surprised her, something that seemed more fitting from Howard Stark than the always proper Steve Rogers, but it felt good.

"You'd better be real, Captain Rogers," she warned, struggling against a tide of emotion threatening to consume her. "If this is some kind of dream or trick or..."

"It's not a dream," he murmured in her ear. "It's not. I'm here."

"Where have you been?" she begged, and that time, she couldn't get the teears out of her voice. "All this time, after your plane went down in the Artic, you, you were gone..."

"This is the closest I could manage," Steve said. "I would have come sooner, but this was as close to that day as I could get."

There was something odd in the phrasing, and she tore herself away from the comfort of his body to turn, to face him. "What do you mean, the closest you could get?"

He looked old, then, the weight of more than just the Red Skull and HYDRA pressing in on him. Old, and sad, and weary beyond belief. He braced himself up on the edge of her sink with one arm, the other hovering close to her but not touching, not anymore. She swallowed, wondering if her moving had seemed like rejection.

"I promised you a dance," he told her. "That wasn't what I was trying to say to you on the radio. Not... everything."

 _I know_ , she wanted to say. _I love you too._

But instead, she pushed her fingers through his. Brushed that little bit of gray hair back behind his ear. Nodded over her shoulder.

"I have a radio here," she said, not sure if she was making sense. "In the parlor, if you'd like to... I mean, if you feel... hell, you know what I mean."

He smiled back, a wane, watery thing, and Peggy realized he was trying not to cry too. "Such language," he tutted, and pulled her with him into the next room.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't be such a Boy Scout all the time," Peggy teased, laughing a little. 

That odd expression clouded Steve's eyes again, but then he smiled and it was like the sun coming out after a winter storm. "Peggy Carter, you have no idea," he told her, and turned on the radio.

She was sure she didn't.

But she looked forward to finding out.

**Author's Note:**

> God, a big part of me wants to finish up that Tony/Steve story I had going a while back, but you know what? I respect the fuck out of how the movie ended for Steve and I'm... I'm good with that. Except I wanted more of it.


End file.
